Tools

We have to give filmmaker Sofia Coppola credit for sticking to her guns. With Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, and now this tiresome latter-day Tinseltown character study, writer-director Coppola has consistently maintained her studiously detached, excessively mannered style. There’s even a similarity in protagonists – bored, diffident movie star Johnny Marco (played narcoleptically by Stephen Dorff), drifting through a series of routines in Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont and other glamorous locations, bears a distinct resemblance to Bill Murray’s out-of-towner and Kirsten Dunst’s teen princess, respectively. Only eleven-year-old Elle Fanning, as Marco’s visiting daughter, offers hope of dramatic passion – and when she departs, so does everything else. Has Coppola been looking at too many old Antonioni movies? (97 min.)
ByKelly Vance